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Monday, May 11, 2015

a Little Free Library

If you haven't heard of a Little Free Library, I'll let you know that they are popping up everywhere around the world. Their official website is here. We first started seeing them a couple of years ago around our city. The boys and I would ride our bikes to a couple that were within a few miles of us. We'd bring a few books from our house that hadn't been read in a while, put them in the Library and then take a few "new" books home with us. Always a fun adventure on nice summer days.
Well last year my Mom started talking about how many books she had, and what a fun idea it would be to have her own Little Free Library in her front yard. I heard it and saved the information for later. Fast forward to this year, early February when I contacted my sisters and started discussing Mom's birthday present. I knew of the perfect gift, but wanted to run it past them first. We all agreed a Little Free Library would be fun and the plans began.

I showed it to my sisters and father. They liked the design and so it was off to the store to buy a few items we didn't have. Two of my sisters joined me on one such outing. We were pushing three carts and had 6 kids in tow. It was quite the adventure, but nothing we couldn't handle. (my sister thought to take this photo. You just can't see all the little heads in the carts)

Early March I started drawing circles, measuring, cutting, gluing and assembly of what would become the three circle boxes that housed all the books. It was a lot of finicky work, so it was slower than I expected, but I wanted to get it just right. I made a 19" circle, 17 1/2" circle and a 16" circle for the three different "boxes".

I bought magnets to help hold the plexiglass doors shut. They were a bit of a challenge because I wanted to drill them in from the back side of the wood but had already put the boxes together. It worked but was a bit frustrating (should have made those holes before assembly). I used a wood drill bit which cut the perfect sized hole for the magnets to sit in on the back but left a smaller hole on the front side for the magnet to pull the screws of the handle in the plexiglass. The holes were filled with clear sealant to keep the magnets in place.

At the end of March- which is when my mother had her birthday, I had three boxes done. We surprised her with it at that point, but couldn't dig the hole for our post because the ground was still frozen. We had to wait awhile till it was warmer.